We bought our first bottle of ketchup when we entertained guests shortly after our wedding in 2000.  The second and third bottles our household has ever owned were consumed & discarded in the last two weeks.  I blame the vegan sleeping in our guest bedroom.

Corey (dubbed “The Kid” by the cafe customers), slips by my desk without a sound before the sun comes up.  By the time Bob comes downstairs in his work clothes, he’s standing at the kitchen counter, making his breakfast, clad in the new work pants and flannel shirt we bought him last week.  Bob starts the coffee as The Kid bounces back into my office.  

“You’re up early,” I remark.  

“Today’s my day to cover the farm chores, right?”  He asks eagerly.  

I guess I said that. 

I don’t remember saying that.

These past two weeks have been a fog.  I decide one course of action will be best.  I issue marching orders and write lists and send text messages.  Then I think another will be preferable.  And I issue more marching orders, write more lists and send more text messages.  And then I forget which course of action I decided on.  Then I forget which day it is.

I remember Bob and I deciding that he’d handle chores Monday morning.  I didn’t anticipate that Corey would be up and ready to help him. 

I arch an eyebrow at The Kid.  “You need to be ready to start lessons at 10am,” I tell him.

“I can get it all done,” he assures me.  Saoirse and Ula join him, and the three teenagers order Bob to stay home and go drink coffee in the woods with me.  

By 10am, they’re all back at the house, breakfasted and ready to start lessons.

Corey and Saoirse started falling in love about a year ago.  His family was going through a lot of turmoil  They were moving frequently and facing down more than their fair share of confusion and heartbreak.  He and Saoirse are on an Environmental Study Team together, and we started assisting with carpooling and overnight stays.  He was raised vegan.  I tried to cook for him.  He swallowed what he could, and just kept coming back around to our house and to the cafe, despite his starvation.  

“I’m very adaptable,” he assured me one afternoon last winter while clearing dishes from the kitchen table.  “That’s how I survive.  I don’t need much food.”

Once he turned legal working age, he got a summer job as a campground waterslide monitor, then a fall job as a zombie for a haunted house.  After he turned 18, he got a full time job as a car washer at a dealership in Albany.  When the first cases of Corona hit the capital district, his Mom and I were in agreement.  Taking public transportation to a job was no longer an option.  He had come for the weekend to visit Saoirse, but it was at the same time we “closed the loop” on the farm.  He was given a choice to stay away for the coming months, or move in to our guest room.

With only the backpack he brought that last Friday, he made the decision to move in.  Among the many decisions we made about closing certain parts of the business, building an online shopping platform for the food and organizing to have our cafe distributor bring in groceries; we unofficially adopted a new family member.  We provide his food, shelter, and homeschooling so he can finish his high school education.   And he surrendered his vegan upbringing to help us run our livestock farm.   He’s got a lot to adapt to, for certain.  Ketchup helps on the food front.  Whatever haunch of beast I lay on the table gets smothered under ketchup and pressed between two slices of bread. 

I observe him swallowing his ketchup sandwiches without complaint, then moving on with enthusiasm to whatever thrill unfolds next.  He does goofy things.  He leaps into a heap of burdock the kids have cut down from the solar panels.  He hoots a huge “YEEEEHAAA” when the girls let him operate the Mule for the first time.  And then one morning, as I juggle the lessons of three students instead of two, something slowly dawns on me:

I’m not thinking so much about this pandemic.  

I’m not fearful if the spring pollen makes me sneeze, or if Bob gives a small cough to clear his throat.

I’m absorbed by the needs of these kids.  Meanwhile, they just keep adapting.  They’ve taken a shine to “their people,” the vulnerable members of the community they’ve adopted for weekly contact calls.  They arrange for the delivery of meat, hand sanitizer and even chocolates.  They work as a team down at the farm.  When that’s done, they wander off into the woods in search of deer antlers.  They tease and play and make Bob and me laugh over dinner.  They hug me.  Constantly.  

One night, heavy with fatigue from it all,  I push aside my research books and peruse my shelves for some lighter reading. I pull down a copy of Little Heathens, a memoir of growing up on a farm in The Great Depression, sent me by Uncle Carl several years ago.  And in its pages I see this same youthful adaptability, remembered by an old woman as the finest time of her life. 

For Corey and my daughters, if we can avert the disaster that is raging around us, this will be a time they’ll remember with nostalgia.  It will become an anchoring cluster of memories, one that will guide them in every choice they make in the future.  And the more they relish it, the more Bob and I are drawn into it. 

I am letting myself go more deeply into the experience.  When we run out of bread, I bring Corey into the kitchen and teach him to bake his own. Bob brings home the tubs of flour from the cafe and he sets to work.  

There are moments when I know he misses his family.  But in general, this Kid truly is a Prince of Adaptation.  I’m learning from him.  I don’t leap into the burdocks.  And I still break down and cry at unexpected moments when I think of those empty cafe tables.  Or I read a story in the New York Times about the grim realities of this illness, or the admonishments that Americans will have to surrender their fierce individuality in order to survive.  And my stomach turns back to knots.

But then I look at The Kid.  I try not to wince as he slathers a perfectly seared slice of grassfed rib eye steak with a line of ketchup before burying it in another sandwich. And at the same time,  I watch as Ula rifles through her dresser to find clothes that don’t fit any longer.  She cuts them up and sews them into new fashions on her sewing machine. Saoirse teaches herself to sew zippers, and then cajoles Ula into letting her apply theater makeup to transform her into a Lizard-Child for our amusement.  

Getting through this is not a question of whether we Americans are willing to surrender our fierce individuality.   It’s a question of whether our other glorious national character trait will prevail:  Our adaptability.  We’ve done it before, whether it was creating Radio programs that helped us smile through The Great Depression, planting Victory Gardens, adjusting to Victory Speed limits, or writing recipes to work with Rationing Coupons.  In Corey’s case, it’s the willingness to eat ketchup sandwiches.  It’s not just a case of suffering and enduring, though.  When we adapt, as Corey and the girls kids have, we find new thrills, new lessons, and new experiences.  That newness leads to happiness.  And that happiness lets us stay home and off the streets and as far away from the over-taxed medical system as possible.  And that reduces the number of illnesses, and reduces the strain on the system.  And then, we do more than recover.  We get better.

Ketchup, anyone?